Dorset Family Search

George Bridport was born in London on March 22, 1783, and baptized on April 20, 1793, at Saint Marylebone, Middlesex, London, the same church where his parents Mary Morgan and George Bridport were married in 1781. (1) Information about his early training is sketchy, as he was not registered as an apprentice in painting, decorative painting, glazing, or drafting, nor was he a member of any London guild company. (2) In 1806 he described himself as an architect when he submitted a now-lost “design for decorating ceilings” to the Royal Academy of Art. (3) Latrobe’s accounts for work he performed in London between 1792 and 1795 list the painters, glaziers, carvers, upholsterers, wallpaperers, ornamental plasterers, and other decorative craftsmen he employed, but do not mention any craftsmen with the surname Bridport, or any of the artists Latrobe later suggested as Bridport’s mentors. (4)

The earliest evidence of Bridport’s work as a decorative painter is his trade card (illustrated on p. 78), which was dated to 1807 by Sarah Sophia Banks (1744-1818), whose immense collection of trade cards at the British Museum offers considerable insight into the work of London artists and artisans contemporary with Bridport. The front of the card proudly announces Bridport’s residence on Cavendish Street, a posh area in northwest London near Saint Marylebone’s Church. The back of the card details the range of materials he decorated and styles in which he professed proficiency: “DRAWING ROOMS/Decorated in the French, Egyptian, Turkish,/Indian, Chinese & Gothic Styles./Transparent Window Blinds/in the above various ways./Ensuite with the Rooms./Temporary Rooms Painted/for Balls. HOUSE PAINTING.”

By 1808 Bridport had brought his talents to the United States. In February of that year Latrobe wrote from Washington, D. C., where he was working on the Capitol, to his brothers-in-law in Philadelphia: “Bridport, whom you sent me, and whom I employed for a month is lost…. Pray hunt him out for me.” (5) Latrobe had intended to have the ceiling of the Hall (or House) of Representatives painted by the fall of 1807, when the Congressional session opened in its new home, but he was unable to procure a suitable painter until he met Bridport and deemed him exactly the quality of painter required for the Michaelangelean job. According to Latrobe, Bridport worked on scaffolding in “equatorial weather,” and the sound of “his groans have reached me” in Philadelphia. (6) But the results were admired immediately. Latrobe commented that the House “Members will think [the ceiling in their chamber] too fine.” (7) In preparation for the work, he had introduced Bridport to Samuel Wetherill, Philadelphia’s premier paint supplier, stating, “I beg especially to introduce him to your attentions as the present transaction may probably be the commencement of considerable transactions with him in the line of your business.” (8)

In August 1808 Latrobe wrote to Bridport, “I want you to have done at Washington about the 1st of October, Mr. [William] Waln’s house [in Philadelphia] then wants you.” (9) In 1809 Bridport was again in Washington to paint the ceremonial oval drawing room for the President’s House and to outfit an elegant temporary Senate Chamber (see illustration on this page). Latrobe wrote in 1809 to Joseph Norris, the president of the Bank of Pennsylvania, about Bridport’s flair for painting the types of decorative work that Latrobe had designed for the ceiling of the bank: “Mr. Bridport … knows exactly what ought to be done. He understands his business well. [He] is a very excellent artist, by profession what is in England called, a decorative Architect and having been brought up under the famous Dixon … he is besides a sober reasonable man of business.” (10)

Latrobe’s reference to Dixon may suggest Bridport’s training, possibly referring to either Robert Dixon (1780-1815), a landscape painter and architectural draftsman, or to Cornelius Dixon (w. 1771-1794), a decorative painter who worked primarily in theatrical set design. (11)